Ben Affleck: GQ's Filmmaker of the Year!

Ben Affleck scopes out the right angle in his cover story spread for GQ‘s December 2012 issue.

Here is what the 40-year-old “Filmmaker of the Year” had to share with the mag:

On the harsh treatment on him from 2003-2004: “The amount of venom—I must have touched some specific little place in the consciousness. I don’t believe I didn’t deserve any negative judgment for anything, but it was just way out of whack. …The most pernicious illusion, myth was that this is something that this guy wants… ‘He’s wanting this much coverage.’ That’s the most unappealing thing that you can say about somebody. And I knew how disastrous it was. It was the last thing I wanted, and I could tell it was damaging, and I tried to get away from it, but there was still this idea: This is what this guy wants, he’s a shallow guy, a camera whore or whatever. And there was no convincing people that this wasn’t the case.”

On overcoming perceptions: “It was only two years [after Good Will Hunting] I had a conversation with a girl in the business, she said something along the lines of, ‘I thought you were the dim-witted friend—you’re pretty bright.’ I was shocked. I had this moment of profound reflection: Does everybody think this about me?”

Pictured inside: Ben heading home with his daughters Violet and Seraphina on Wednesday (November 14) in Santa Monica while his wife Jennifer Garner caught a departing flight out of LAX Airport that afternoon in Los Angeles.